Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is asking the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to reject a proposed change to how livers are distributed for transplant.​"Arbitrary geographical boundaries should not determine whether a patient lives or dies," Schneiderman wrote in a letter, released today, to acting HHS Secretary Eric Hargan.

The United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit that oversees the country's region-based Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, in July proposed a change that would prioritize directing a liver to a person within a 150-nautical mile radius of the donor hospital. The change is scheduled to be finalized next week.

The hope is that policy would help even out disparities among regions, but Schneiderman wrote that it would make only "trivial improvements" to the system. New York has more than 1,700 people waiting for a liver, though only about 350 receive one in a given year.

"The Secretary has the legal authority, and the moral responsibility, to prevent the OPTN from adopting a regressive policy, and to require a fairer allocation system that complies with the law," the attorney general wrote.

New York historically lags behind other states in organ donation registration rates, but has taken steps in recent years to increase participation.

Schneiderman wrote that continuing to favor geography-based liver distributions will perpetuate transplant tourism, in which wealthy people temporarily relocate to regions like the South that have a shorter wait list while the less affluent languish in places like New York.​"Patients in need of liver transplants should have the same access," he wrote. ​